KEYS TO GETTING YOUR ACT TOGETHER IV

KEEP YOUR CAR CLEAN

If you cannot clean it your self, let some one else clean it for you. A dirty car is an obvious sign of a chemically imbalanced mental state, just as is with your home, room and kitchen, especially when you don't have kids. And yes people make excuses for their dirty cars because they are busy, have children, are medical students and what have you. I refuse to buy that because you can't be too busy to be clean. When I was growing up, there were five of us and our neighbors kids packed into my mom’s brown station wagon pretty much everyday, but as old and raggedy as our ‘pea-jotu’ 504 (also known as ‘Helicopter’ because it had chronic exhaust pipe problems and sounded like one) looked, it was always clean both inside and out. I know i am sounding like a hypocrite because I too am a very guilty of this. Looking back, my attitude towards the state of my cars clearly spelled ‘issues.’ My first car, ‘Rosie’ the red 92 Honda Accord is where it all began. I hated the car because it was red, a stick shift, rather old for a graduation present and I ended up teaching myself how to drive it two months after it was purchased. Then as days passed, it was just one problem after the other, the AC, the check engine light, me forgeting to fill up on gas and getting stranded on the road. From someone in the apartment complex randomly smashing the backlights, to it rolling into a tree on a very windy night, missing a house by a few meters. Maintenance was eating through my pockets so there was no way I could value it, so I rarely cleaned or washed the thing. Eventually someone rammed into me and killed ‘Rosie’ and I got ‘Ebony’, a black 95 Civic. Ebony was just different, firstly because I bought it with my boyfriend, when he had just bought his own accord; his was the ‘Big-Poppa Honda’ and mine was the ‘Baby-Momma Honda’(lol). It never gave me any problem and I was comfortable in it emotionally despite the fact that it did not have AC. I always kept ‘Ebby’ clean by washing her myself either at home or at the coin-carwash. I had peace of mind, could dress very well, get in and pose a little and when I wrecked her, I was distraught, I still am because she has been irreplaceable. Then came ‘Leila’ the 94 Accord I got from a crooked used car sales man from Jordan. Right from the point of sale, the car was trouble. I had it for only three months, but it gave me a life’s worth of trouble. First, it was an emergency car that I had to buy within the week of the accident because of work, then I was very uncomfortable with having to make car-payments, then the car had all sorts of mechanical problems and I hadn't even cleaned or washed the car yet. In fact I felt it was a piece of scarp that I just needed to get me to and fro and boy was I right, because I found out it was a salvaged vehicle that had been rebuilt and the information was never disclosed to me in the first instance. And the stupid manhad to audacity to be racist on me when I confronted him, he forgot I was from the thrid world too, Nigeria for that matter, we wrote the manual on obtaining by trickery. I took it back and collected some of my money and used it to buy ‘Grace’ a gray 92 Mazda Protégé from my roommate, which by the grace of God, I plan to keep until I decide it is time for fresh ‘dream-wheels’. These issues going on became evident in the way I handled the different cars, and how clean I kept them and it is the same for many other people. They have marital problems and use their cars as an escape, probably eating and sleeping in it. You have untrained and bad mannered children, and it is evident just by looking in your car. If you cannot keep a small confined environment that is the car clean, organized and mechanically functioning, then how can you manage a home or even your life? Your car is the second most important material possession to most working class people, next to your shelter, so why not treat it that way. Just as seen on the Oprah Show, when you unclutter a space or an area where you spend so much time in, your life also starts becoming uncluttered; you can breath and think better and not feel choked up by the mess and drwoning in it.